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Tonight's special guest is Catherine April Watters from Brooklyn, New York. She says, "I consider myself to have been abused for decades by scores of people. The original abuse starts in the "family" but gets perpetuated throughout your life by everyone who tells you to "get over it" or "forgive" instead of taking your claim of abuse seriously." There was domestic violence in the house in Catherine's early life. Her parents divorced when she was around 6 or 7 but her mother was psychologically abusive. "I would speak up as early as 7 years old," she says, "saying that I could not be raise in this kind of environment. I was dying .. I felt it. I pulled my eyelashes out for around 3 years from the 2nd thru the 5th Grade from stress." Her brother moved out to live with her father and she was left at the house with her mother. "My mother tried to get me to feel responsible for her, take care of her emotionally," she explains. "Living with my mother was psychological torture! She always played the victim." No one understood what was happening, not a neighbor, a family friend or a relative. Catherine was made to take care of both herself and her mother. "My health has suffered my entire life because all anyone said whenever I tried to tell anyone was, "get over it" or just not take it seriously." She goes on, "The people I was surrounded by were total losers. I spoke truth to my parent straight and she never, never did anything to change, apologize, or admit she was wrong." She concludes, "She was turning me into a monster!" NAASCA understands the issues Catherine shares well. No one who comes to us after suffering such emotional abuse and neglect hears "get over it." We welcome her to the NAASCA family!